WHY OH WHY????

[normal rules]

Did SOD take Oster off today. Was he injured or did he think \"lets consolidate the lead\" (at the time) by bolstering the defence.

3 points given away today

[acacia94]

Got to agree with you there mate. Oster had been having a fantastic game. He was running everything and his linking up and general possession meant we we were just playing keepball and pretty much defending from within their half. I was listening to BBC Berkshire in one ear and they were just drooling over his performance. And then SOD took him off! Even the very partisan BBC Berkshire were just gobsmacked with the decision - they said The Royals will be loving that substitution. Now. I don't know whether it was a knock or something else but John wasn't best pleased with going off which leads me to believe he was perfectly OK to carry on. Hird came on. It was just an open invitation for them to come on to us. The substitutions today were just nonsense. Absolutely ridiculous. Difficult to say whether it would have changed anything but sure as hell didn't help. Need to see the 'ball out of play' incident on the League show that lead upto the free kick and goal but looked out from where I was sitting. All in all a very weird game - but a right ripper none the less. We could have made it 4-4 in the last 90 seconds.

[hoolahoop]

About sums it up , the Royals are laughing about the decision to take Oster off as well as taking the piss out of Martis and Webster(with good reason imo).
If he wasn't injured then tactically it was not one of the best decisions made by our SO'D.
These were very important points to give away considering the absence of Billy Sharp.

[donnievic]

Maybe it was becuase Dumbuya was getting over run on the wing,everytime they seemed to have 2 men over and although i thought Oster was our MOTM he isn't the best at defending,think that may have been the reason although in the end it didn't work but once they scored the 2nd i didn't think we would hold on

[The Red Baron]

Looking back it is pretty clear that although a substitution was probably the right thing at a stage of the game when we were 3-2 up, the wrong personnel/ tactics were used. Wilson should have come on, probably for Woods who looked a yard slower than the rest of the midfield, and we should have gone 4-5-1 with Coppinger and Shiels going wider to provide the full backs with cover. Stock could have sat in front of the defence and Wilson and Oster would hold the middle of the park and try to support Hayter.

Bringing Hird on left us playing very narrow against a team who had brought on additional width. I noticed in the Watford away game that we coped fine when they played down the middle but after they went behind and opted to use the flanks more, we struggled. Also we did Ok at Cardiff until Burke replaced Chopra and suddenly they had two wingers rather than a narrower front three.

[acacia94]

We're not great at defending crosses full stop. Anyone playing with some proper width seems to catch us out relatively easily. Gaz Roberts was only a goblin-sized left back but he somehow managed to harrass right sided wingers into either making poor crosses, passing back or just not crossing at all. Just a question of how tight you're prepared to get. He was a right tenacious little ba*tard and we miss his like. One of him on each side of the defence would have broken stuff up nicely on Satdi afternoon.
Anyway, onto the next one.